Aircraft contrail illuminated at altitude by last vestiges of a sunset?
Remember the hullabaloo a few years back over the "missile" off the west coast? I live near some tall mountains, and I see things that look like rocket blast (think Cape Canaveral smoke trail) coming west over the Sandia Mountains near me. They look vertical, not horizontal due to optics. But they are most certainly aircraft contrails. I see them west of me at night lit up by the sun well after sunset here given their altitude. Sunset off Long Island would have been around 8:25 PM on that date in 1996. The flight exploded at 8:31 PM.
The eyewitnesses were not looking at contrails over a mountain. They were looking out at a flat ocean where the concept of “up” is pretty clear.